Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Happiest Mind Limited Q1 FY 'twenty six Earnings Conference Call hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Please note that this call is being recorded. With this, I now hand the conference over to miss Aditi Patel from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Samia. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today on q one f y twenty six earnings call of Happiest Minds Technologies Limited. On behalf of ICSI Securities, I would like to thank the management of Happiest Minds for giving us the opportunity to host this earnings call. Today, we have with us mister Ashok Sutha, chairman and chief mentor mister Joseph Anand Sarajo, co chairman and CEO mister Venkat Raman Narayanan, managing director, mister Raju Shah, executive director, mister Ram Mohan, CEO, infrastructure management and security services, mister Sreedhar Manta, CEO, Generative AI business services, mister Anand Balakrishnan, CFO, and miss Priyanka Sharma, head investor relations.
I will hand it over to Priyanka for safe harbor statement and to take the proceedings forward. Thank you and over to you Priyanka.
Good morning to all participants in the call. Welcome to this conference call to discuss the financial results for the first quarter ended 06/30/2025. I'm Priyanka, head of investor relations. We hope you have had an opportunity to review the earnings release we issued yesterday. Let me quickly outline the agenda for today's call.
Ashok will begin the call by sharing his perspective on the business environment and our results. Joseph and Rankin will then speak about our financial performance and operational highlights, after which we'll have the floor open for q and a. Before I hand over, let me begin with the safe harbor statement. During the call, we could make forward looking statements. These statements consider the environment we see as of today and carry a risk in terms of uncertainty because of which the actual results could be different.
We do not undertake to update those statements periodically. Let me now pass it on to Ashok. Ashok, over to you.
Right. Thank you, Priyanka. Good morning, everyone. It is truly a pleasure to have you with us today as we step confidently into a new fiscal year. In q one FY twenty six, Hapi's Minds is powered ahead, delivering 17.5% year on year growth in constant currency and maintaining a robust margin of 21.4%, firmly within our guided range.
Our EBITDA this quarter stood at 124 crores, achieving a standout 12.9% sequential growth, well ahead of most peers and industry trends. In a quarter where most reported muted or single digit growth, our strong profitability and disciplined execution really sets us apart. What makes this milestone even more significant is that we achieved it while continuing to invest deeply in our future, strengthening our delivery ecosystems, scaling our platforms, driving innovation across our focus verticals, and making sustained investments in the Gen AI business unit and in the NetNews sales unit. Friends, as shared in our last call, over the past two years, we have launched 10 transformational initiatives, and it is gratifying to see they're now taking root and delivering tangible results. These initiatives are helping us not only to grow, but also broaden our horizons, unlock new opportunities, and shape the digital landscape ahead.
We are proud to have delivered another quarter of double digit growth backed by a superior margin profile, which has been sustained for 20 consecutive quarters, earning our customers trust as their advisers and co creators in shaping their digital journeys. Last quarter, we announced that Joseph has become the co chairman and CEO as a part of our plan suppression. Joseph brings his steady vision and deep commitment to drive profitable growth and strategic strength. Let me touch upon the foremost strategic transformations that have touched and shaped this quarter's performance and will continue to drive value in the years ahead. Through our acquisitions in the previous financial year, we have significantly deepened our capabilities in BSSI and accelerated our leadership in AI driven digital transformation.
These entities are now fully integrated into the Hapdos Minds fabric, delivering innovation across 13 countries and powering performance that is well above industry benchmark. Three other significant transformational changes were introduced in the '25, and we had shared that the impact would become visible in f y twenty six. We are seeing this exactly disposition unfold in this quarter and will continue hereafter. Reorganizing Happiness Minds on fixed industry verticals basis was one of these changes. We are noticing that this verticalization strategy is already thrilling accelerated growth in travel, media, and entertainment, and manufacturing.
BFSI has become our largest vertical, and health care, our third largest, is also gaining strong momentum. At the same time, our focused investments in the Gen AI business unit under Sridhar Manta's leadership and the net new sales engine under Maninder are not only advancing this quarter's growth, but have also built a strong foundation for sustained high quality growth in the quarters ahead. Since as you are aware, the global IT industry continues to fall face its own set of challenges with many peers reporting flat or subdued performance. Our 10 strategic transformation and focused investments and have enabled us to navigate this environment with clarity and conviction, driving growth ahead of industry levels. We believe the impact of these transformational changes will continue to drive strong momentum through the coming quarters this year and even more so in FY '27.
We are confident that this momentum will help us deliver double digit growth over a three year cycle that began last year and will carry through FY '27. On that note of confidence and progress, I will now hand it over to our co chairman and CEO, Joseph, who will bring these strategies to light with stories from the ground, recent wins across our business, and updates on the other key initiatives.
Sir. Can you I think Joseph, can you step back a little bit from microphone and speak?
Sure. Is it better?
No, sir.
Yeah. Yeah. A little better, though.
Venkat, is it better now?
Yes. Much better.
Yes. Yes. Better.
Thank you, Ashok, and good morning to everyone on the call. I'm delighted to share that this quarter has been another period of solid growth and outstanding performance for Happiest Minds across all fronts. Liberating the strong foundation we have built and the 10 transformational initiatives underway, we are seeing momentum accelerate across our key business units and geographies, translating into strong double digit growth of 17.5% and healthy profitability. Active customers have grown from two eighty one to two eighty five, and million dollar plus customers have increased from 57 to 59, showing how we are deepening relationships and converting early engagement into multimillion dollar partnerships.
Repeat business remains strong at 94%, a consistent metric that reflects both customer loyalty and a stable growth engine. Let me briefly touch upon the demand environment. The global IT industry continues to face a mixed environment marked by macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. At the same time, customers need to execute on their digital and AI strategy to remain competitive and deliver growth. Demand remains resilient in key verticals such as BSS and Healthcare, while technology, media entertainment and manufacturing are beginning to show early signs of renewed investment.
Against this backdrop, ATS Minds has delivered a standout quarter. In an environment where customers are seeking partners to help them achieve more with their modernized data and adopt AI, an AI for better efficiency and resilience, our continued investments in these areas are clearly paying off. These focused investments have translated to strong results across our portfolio. Our GenAI business unit led the way this quarter with 12.7% sequential and 82% year on year growth, while showing significant traction with multiple pilots scaling into long term engagements and utilization improving sharply from 34.3% to forty eight forty point eight percent. IMS is driving growth with stronger realizations and three new global clients added this quarter, and both IMSS and PDF delivered healthy year on year gain, underscoring the broad based momentum we are building.
I'm also delighted to share that our annual flagship TechEven Blips twenty twenty five, concludes successfully on twenty fourth July. Under the team, generate and innovate, our team showcased how we disrupt how we drive disruption, innovation, and acceleration, highlighting our commitment to building future ready solutions and platforms. Many of the solutions and concepts showcased in Blitz hold huge potential and should contribute to our growth in the coming years. When I look at this quarter, I see our three pillars of unifying strength, igniting innovation and cultivating enduring partnerships coming alive in tangible ways. When I stepped into this role, I carried a clear vision to build Happiest Minds into an organization that integrates seamlessly, innovates relentlessly, and fortieth partnerships that stand the best of time.
This quarter, that vision is translating into action and measurable results. We are unifying strength by integrating our acquired entities, harmonizing processes, platforms and talent to build a stronger, better and bigger organization. With igniting innovation by investing in next generation solutions, advancing cloud AI and generic offering, and leveraging domain expertise to power client transformation. We are third, we are cultivating enduring partnerships with some of the leading technology companies, deepening engagement, co creating on priorities, and earning long term trust. Let me share a few stories from the ground.
A leading US airport chose us to reimagine the customer interaction platform, not as a proof of concept, but as a full production grade denied deployment, transforming passenger experience in the airport. In BFSI, an insurance major, entrust us to automate critical workflows using Microsoft's power platform. In Australia, a mining services company engaged us to overall IT infrastructure and cybersecurity at a time when operational resilience is a boardroom priority. We're also working with the global home improvement retail chain on custom finance and IT solutions and with the multinational logistics company to embed Chennai into the operation. These are some of the many wins powered by investments in net new sales combined with a proven plan and expand approach.
Our industry group verticalization strategy is also showing results. We are seeing strong momentum in technology, media and entertainment and in industrial manufacturing with the resurgence in discretionary spending. BFSI, our largest vertical contributing 26% to revenues and health care, our third largest vertical, continue to build on their momentum. We're also witnessing strong traction in global care equity centers, DCCs, and within the private equity ecosystem. We continue to support key portfolio companies in their post acquisition journey, unlocking synergies while enabling DCCs to modernize operations and deliver greater value.
These initiatives are gaining momentum, and we expect them to drive meaningful results and growth in the coming quarters. Our product led SaaS strategy is another important driver. ARTA, a flagship unified banking platform, is showing encouraging signs of expansion. In BFSI, our insurance in a box platform is replacing fragmented systems with a unified low code solution that streamlines insurance operations, accelerates product launches, lowers cost, and ensures compliance. Together, these efforts are enabling insurers and UMA to operate smarter, faster, and at scale.
A revolutionary health care product with an unmatched bioinformatics capabilities and collaboration with leading research institutions is progressing well too with development on track for a potential launch by '7. In Q1 FY 'twenty six, we delivered EBITDA with a 21.4% margin, achieving 12.9% sequential growth. Sustaining this level of profitability while integrating acquisitions, investing in JNI and strengthening our sales engine is a testament to the resilience and scalability of our business. When you connect the dots, our strategic transformation and focus on investments and are clearly driving strong financial outcomes, telling a compelling story of purposeful change, seamless integration and long term value creation. Well, as a reflect on this quarter, it is clear in a challenging industry demand environment, our transformation initiatives are working, our growth is broad based and our outlook remains strong.
With that load of confidence and excitement about the road ahead, let me now hand it over to Venkat, our Managing Director, to walk you through the numbers and share how we are thinking about the future. Venkat, over to you.
Thank you, Joseph, and good morning, everyone. The next few minutes, I'll cover the financial and operational highlights of the quarter, '6. To start with, we have posted a very encouraging set of numbers.
Seeing numbers and results looking in from others in the industry, I do feel even more so. At 64,400,000.0, we have shown a sequential growth of 2.3% in dollar terms. Coincidentally, growth in constant currency has been also at 2.3%. Our year over year growth on discount was 15%. This is our twentieth quarter after our IPO where we have shown sequential and year over year growth in our revenues.
Our revenue CAGR in constant currency, if counted from IPO, is about 25%. Coming back to the quarter, in rupees, we reported a total income of rupees $5.80 crores, a growth of 18.5% year over year. I would like to mention that our results reflect our unwavering focus on growth alongside with profitability. Operating margins at 17.6%, showing a sequential growth of 19.6% reflects a swing back over the temporary dip we saw in the previous quarter. Year over year, growth of 5.8% in our operating margins despite continued investments in our generative AI business, new sales engines and other transformational agenda items reflect our commitment to our vision of profitable growth.
Now you'll look if you look at our segmental results, Generative AI business services has broken even at an operating margin level this quarter. This has been from a loss of about 2.53 crores in the previous quarter to a marginal profit of 24 lakhs this quarter. This business ran at an average utilization of about 55%. Our opportunity cost or rather, I would like to call investment in the segment for the quarter continues to be about 3 crores. That's computed on the basis that, you know, the generative AI services, if it was to deliver the similar levels of profitability as our TDES business are slightly higher, we should have seen our margin increase by about 3 crores.
Now if you adjust our operating margin for the above number and similar investments in our new sales engine, the number on profitability of operating margin, we would get is about 18.4% to 18.5%. I refer to these adjustments to highlight the path we are taking to improving operating margins as we will see some cost pressures going forward into Q2 due to our planned pay increases. In sum, efficiency in our established businesses, payback starts from our new business segments of generative AI and our new sales engine and some bit of luck or benefit from foreign currency movements will be definitely required to mitigate people cost increases that we see in the coming quarters. Now coming to EBITDA, we are back to 21.4 for the quarter, which is about rupees 124 crores. Our profit margin percentage is within our estimated range of 20 to 22% on total income.
Sequential year over year, EBITDA growth was 12.9% and year over year was 6.3%. We'll not delve too much into these as I've covered the rationale for growth and improvement while talking about operating margins. Our TAT for the quarter at 9.9% and INR 57 crores showed a sequential and year over growth of sixty eight percent and twelve percent, respectively. Adjusted EPS, as I mentioned in my earlier call, a better indicator of Cable shareholder return was rupee $4.55 for the quarter. Coming to certain operational metrics, utilization for the quarter stood at 78.9%.
This has been the best in the last nine quarters and reflects some of the steps taken towards improving efficiency in delivery and demand aligned resourcing that we are resorting As we have shared in our previous call, enhancing utilization remains a key priority, and we are pleased to see our efforts yielding tangible results. We ended the quarter with 6,523 happiest mines, showing a reduction of 1%. But here, the story would not be complete if I didn't tell you that our gross additions were close to 150. Our attrition has trended upwards to 18.2% and efforts around to manage this and bring this in line with previous quarters. Our DSO has slightly increased to ninety one days, and that's being brought back, so we are trying to rein that in and bring it closer to a long term average of between 85 to 88.
Capital return ratios of ROE and ROE have shown substantial improvement, 6014% respectively. On customer, we increased our million dollar client to 59 from 57 in the previous quarter. Total customer increased on a net number basis by four to 285. Billion dollar customers have paid 185 and so has the average revenue customer, remaining range bound at about $900,000 per customer. Looking ahead, we continue to drive growth scenarios like cloud, data data, cybersecurity, and AI led transformation in our verticals of focus while maintaining financial discipline.
For the year, our effort is to deliver double digit growth in constant currency while maintaining our EBITDA margins in the range of 20 to 22%. Thank you for your time and continued trust. We'll now open the call for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles.
The first question comes from the line of from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Now firstly, the question on your geographic growth mix. This quarter, we saw our largest market in US, that's in sequential revenue decline. So in tandem, our top client revenue has also declined. So could you help us understand how The US market performed for us outside the top account?
Yes. You you just received one of the criteria for the acquisitions we made last year was the diversification of our job geographic revenue. Because if you remember, if you recall, a year or maybe a year and a half back, our share of revenues from U. S. Was 75% or so, which was uncomfortably high.
And organic means and inorganic means, we've been able to diversify. So it's a deliberate strategy in order to get the share of US revenues around 60% or so. Now there's been a small sequential decline in the revenues of the share of in in the revenues from India. And there are a couple of reasons to this. You know, the first reason is that one of our existing customer one of our customers had a program that was a one point five year program that just got completed.
We finished it in Q1 sorry, Q4. And therefore, we and we've not redone the engagement. So but it's not the engagement, and therefore, that had some impact. Secondly, we we we had a customer that is relooking at their overall strategy, and therefore, they've had a couple of programs that are on pause. But as I mentioned earlier, at a at a broad level, I think the the while there are some, you know, challenges in the macroeconomic and, you know, geopolitical environment, I think customers are still there is I see resilience in the demand environment and customers wanting to undertake and execute on their strategic initiative, especially so in the '1.
And I think this momentum will carry over into q two.
Okay. My second question was for now your geography. It's a very strong growth this quarter, India and APAC. Also, do we expect this kind of momentum from India and APAC to continue in the near future?
If you look at the growth from India and APAC, I would say it's much on the higher side in this quarter. So while I expect the growth to continue, it would not be at the same level. But if you look at APAC through our acquisition of Pure Software, we did get a couple of large accounts on those accounts in the BFSS space. One of them is a leading banking and financial services company, the global major, but we are doing most of our work with the with the units in APAC, and that's shown very good growth. We have solid relationships, good track record, and we expect this account to continue growing and get into the $10,000,000 range by end of the year.
And in India, you know, we we we do have a health care company that we're working with, which has done quite well. We've also had a few of the the the engagement that were that we are doing with The US entities. Those have been transferred to India, the DCC, and we're engaging with the DCC. This is a movement of money from or dollars from US to India, which has contributed to the slight drop in the North America revenues that you talked about and increase the growth in India. Having said that, I think India is a geo that we are quite bullish about.
Probably our share of revenues from India is among the highest. And just given the the the expected growth rate in The US GDP, continued growth rate, I would say, this is a geo that we will continue focusing on.
Sure. Secondly, last quarter, we had mentioned that we will relocate our 1,000,000,000 revenue target now also. Could you please share any update regarding our 1,000,000,000 revenue target that we had earlier?
You don't take that, Venkat?
So, you know, Rishi, as part of our vision, we had set ourselves a goal of being a billion dollar company by FY thirty one. And, you know, the market environment in which we have set that goal was was a more, you know, conducive environment. There are several other goals that we have set as part of that vision on which we're progressing well. And if you really look at our CAGR of from FY '21 to FY '25, we've done a CAGR of 28.5%.
As we get to $1,000,000,000 by FY 'thirty one, we need around 22% to 23%. It is doable, but the market conditions are a little different as we pointed out last time. We are relooking we're tracking and reviewing the situation. And, you know, when we feel that we need to make an announcement or an adjustment, we will come back. But as of now, we are holding course, sir. Those are sorry. That's the issue here. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.
You. The next question comes from the line of miss Aditi Patel from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. So, Mike, a question is on order book and pipeline. Can you give some color on how has the order book shaped up, maybe the y o y growth and how is the pipeline shaping up? And do you expect h two to be better than H1? Or we should see the normal seasonality in Q3?
Sure.
I think while we don't share numbers on our order book and pipeline, we've addressed this several times. I think there's been a healthy growth in our order book and our pipeline. And this is cutting across multiple deals and verticals. So that's the happening part. As we speak, there are and I've I've said coming from two angles.
One is the LN strategy that Ashok referred to. The team has come together over the last in Q1, and we have several large customers that have already got closed and some that are in later stages. And a few of them have started with discoveries, which should lead into larger implementation in Q2 and Q3. And others are starting off at good to decent size right off the bat. So that's from the end part of it.
Our land and expand strategy, which is something that has worked out really well for us, continues to do well. If you see the number of million dollar customers, you know, that's gone up. We have one additional $10,000,000 plus customer and one additional 3,000,000 to $5,000,000 customer. The million dollar customers have gone up from 57 to 59. So all of these metrics point reflect the the the increased pipeline and the order book that we have.
And so, sir, therefore, should we expect h two to be better than h one?
Venkat, do you wanna take that one, Venkat?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Aditi, I I hope you guys can hear me now that somehow something glitchy right now.
But, yes, started the quarter with about 2.3% growth like we like we mentioned and talked about on the call earlier. Want to keep the same momentum and build on it. Obvious two is expected to be better except, you know, for the seasonal issues of some holidays in q three. We should hopefully do better. And that's how we'll achieve that double digit growth that I talked about, right, for the year.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah. My second question is on so we gave the share of revenue from automation, and there has been a significant increase in that in q one.
So how do you define automation and what has driven this sharp growth?
So I think Yeah. Look at automation, Aditi. The various components out here is RPA that includes infrastructure automation, BPA, business process automation, and low code, no code lettered work. And if you you just see that with with Jena also coming in, there's a huge push towards automation. We're looking at how do you automate most of l one activities from an infrastructure monitoring standpoint and and and automate quite a bit of the l two activity.
And, you know, we are building some solution accelerators internally to enable and to accelerate that. Again, on business process automation, there's been a huge push by customers to bring in more efficiency and to accelerate some of the process, whether it's order to cash or manage inventory and other processes just because of the pressure, the cost pressures that they are facing. They're making these investments in various automation activities, which paid very well to our DPA query that we created six, seven years back. And low code, no code is something that customers are looking at to enable citizen developers and to get applications out faster. And so all of these have contributed to the, you know, to the growth that you see of of the revenue from automation from 25.3% to 28.2% in q one.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah. The next question is on the high-tech vertical.
So this vertical has been soft for last two quarters and is all flat on y o y basis. So what has led to the softness, and when should we expect recovery in this vertical?
So this is why Joseph Joseph, you know, the the picture from the industry standpoint, there is a slight, you know, correction to that number because of the debt. And that that was reasonably large large customer, and he was in the high-tech vertical. Yeah, Joseph.
Sure. Yeah.
After even accounting for that movement that Venkat talked about, if you really look at that vertical, Aditi, it's like a duck feet under the water. Like, there's a little bit of movement between increases and drops. So we've had a couple of customers in the networking space and one in the tech space grow quite significantly during the quarter as reflected in the top 20 customers. At the same time, we did if you remember last earnings call, we talked about a customer called VBC. We took a hit on the on our margins as well because of the write off that we had to do.
They were not able to raise the next round of funding. And that project we had to stop, we have talked about it in the last earnings. So there's been a slower effect of that, and that was in the high-tech vertical. But overall, what I'm seeing is that there there are spend in the high-tech vertical. We put high-tech and media entertainment together, you know, in in in in some of the areas around networking, you know, on on using more of Geniei in in in these activities.
On high-tech analytics, which is a new initiative that we started. And, you know, our hope is that this vertical will demonstrate growth in the ensuing quarters.
Okay. Okay. Got it. And color on the trav momentum in travel and manufacturing. So should we expect this momentum to continue going forward?
So if you look at DME, you know, there's very little travel. It's actually media entertainment if you ask me, and we probably declassify it as such. But we had quite a few customers in this space who where we in one of the customers, which is one of the largest cinema chains in Mexican globally, we did discovery exercise on multiple digital areas and some of the implementation started in Q1. So that momentum should roll over into Q2 and Q3 as well as we ramp up the execution of these projects. For another one of our US based customers who's in the ad tech space, they've had good results in the last quarter.
You know, I think the second half of last calendar year was not as good, but they've managed to recover. And as such, their spending has increased, and we are their largest partner, engineering partner. So that has again contributed, and that should sustain itself unless they do their their their results improve and they decide to invest more. And there are a couple of other customers that have also contributed. Overall, I think in this space, it's you know, we we the areas to focus on are around data engineering, looking at, you know, how do you help them with ad management and, you know, generating additional revenue.
And those are areas that our media entertainment domain is focused on.
Okay. Thank you for the color. Just last bit, our unbilled DSO days has increased by, like, seven days q o q. So is this, like, a quarterly phenomenon? Should we see this normalizing going forward?
We should see that now. We guided cover that in our DSO. It has gone up by about four days, largely because of the intent of the Middle East entity that we acquired.
Sir, sorry to interrupt.
We are coming we are getting the entire
Sir, your voice is breaking.
Yeah. Sorry?
Your voice is breaking, sir.
Yeah. Okay. Aditi, can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Yep. It's because of the integration with Gavs. We are getting our billing and systems online with them, so that that's part of the process, and we should be back to Nava. It's got nothing to do with the seasonality. It's got to do with the integration and efforts around to get that back on track.
Okay. Got it. Thank you for answering my questions.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Vinay from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Yes, sir. You're all good.
Yeah. Thanks for giving me the opportunity, sir. So just basically on the vertical wise, that our main focus would be on BFSI and high-tech vertical, which will be the growth driving vertical. What are the long term competitive advantage and market leadership position does we have to establish in that vertical and particularly in the subsegments within that vertical?
Sure. So let me take that question, Vinesh. You look, BFSI is going to be one of our growth verticals driven by the acquisitions that we made. I'll come back into why I think that we would be we are bullish about that vertical. But the second vertical is not high-tech, but health care is what I would say.
If you just look at the growth that you demonstrated in the last few quarters and the share of revenue and overall, look at the market. Health care is the second one. So I just thought I'll clarify that. BFSI, I think there are several advantages that we have through the acquisition. If you look at I talked about the Absa banking platform, which is a huge demonstrator of our capabilities.
We have built our own banking platform. It just signifies that we understand the space and the need really well. So it helps a lot both in direct revenues from the banking platform and, you know, the the pull through effect that it creates. For this year, we're expecting the other revenues to grow by 20% to 25%. So that will be one of the growth drivers.
We also have, you know, the insurance base. There's quite a bit of capability that we got from Audi. And as we speak, we have a couple of large prospects that are almost at the point of closure in the insurance space. We also have insurance in a box, which we've been selling to MGAs and UMA and to brokers. We started with Africa, but the plan is to extend that to other geos as well.
Again, there's direct revenue and the ability to demonstrate our capabilities in this area. This is apart from various other accelerators and capability and competencies that we've built both within Happiest the first one Happiest Minds and third twice pure software entity. On health care, I think we're very uniquely positioned. As such, the market is going through a major transformation with data and connectivity being the core elements out here, whether you're talking about medtech or some of the devices that we see in the the hospitals or the overall processes that customer using. Chennai is becoming a huge part of it.
And as we speak, you know, while collaborating, working with HappierCell, we've been able to to get deep knowledge and capabilities in multiple areas, whether it's in medical devices, bioinformatics, you know, applying GenAI to to various health care use cases. And this has helped us to build a healthy pipeline in this space as well as to get several new customers. And, you know, we are very, bullish about the contributions of health care vertical as we go forward.
Thank you, sir. Next one on the margin front, as you told that margin, EBITDA margin, we are holding up between 20 to 22%. So what are the financial strategies which will be deployed to mitigate the risks such as investment which we are doing in the new business and the sales teams?
Yep. I did cover that in my in my speaking point of my talk. We are looking at efficiency improvement. One of the utilization, you know, we we are seriously focused on that. We are at five, six quarter high at 78.9%.
Second is generative AI and AI services that we have, the new business unit into which we are making into just turnaround on an operations just broke even. We are now hoping that that should get to the same profitability level by end of this year or at least early next year. Similar to that, we've seen PD as a company at large, which which can match to the profit. So I think it's we we have the new sales engine that we have put in place nicely that has made the hires, and they take there's a lead lag effect to all hires on sales, and they start pulling in the revenues. That that should also add to, you know should start deflating the investments that we made.
So these are the things that we see as an upside lever to profitability. Obviously, you know, the newer markets, newer customers, all of that also contributing to the profit levers. Whereas, you know, you you're seeing an attrition at about 18.2%. So we have to address some of those through compensation adjustments, which is what we do. So the pluses I talked about and some some on the, you know, things in terms of the downward impact of cost increases will have to be deflated.
In all, we are trying to move the margin levels. We are at 21.4% already. So 20 to 22% is a story of maintain and grow.
Sir, one last question from my side that the growth which you talked about, double digit growth, that includes the M and A also or it is organic basis?
See, we don't differentiate between M and A and organic. We say growth, so I'll stick to that line. Our Q1 revenues is purely organic. We want to look at it because the base, we have with partner acquisition numbers is going into that, the sequential growth number that I talked about. And as of now, we don't have any m and a, which is likely to close.
So you can assume that that's that's the pace of the business that we are looking to grow organically for the year. But if there is some inorganically on top of it, that's what I would estimate.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, and all the best, sir.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Dipesh Mehta from MK Global. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. First, about the which you indicated in quarter two. Can you help us understand what would be the likely impact because of paycheck on margin?
Second question is about utilization. What would be our comfort in considering all skill requirement and utilization, if you can give some comfort in? Then I have follow-up question related to this utilization. Thanks.
On the comp increase, I would I would not give you any specifics because work is in progress. You know, our typical cycles are in July every year for the c one to c six level. So you what's happening in the industry, nobody is talking about it. There is deferral. There is, you know, silence, but we are evaluating it very seriously, and that's something that we'll we'll we'll come back to you and more I we can share a lot more details in the next call.
So that's on the compensation increase. The second is first on utilization. There is a 78.9%. I think we have touched numbers of eighty eighty 79 to 80 in the previous quarter. So we we have to look at that sort of a number.
You you know, we have got that headroom. Like I said, then the AI services on a on a cumulative basis is at about 55, 56% of utilization. You could get that up. The numbers are not too large, so, you know, we don't expect that to impact too much. But every percentage point on that helps deflate cost. So that will be a focus.
No. I understand. Why I ask is if I look, let's say, our implied growth guidance require around similar to q one kind of growth in next three quarter, Your headcount is declined quarter on quarter, why why each year, I won't look at it. For last few quarters, headcount remains flattish. And that is why I just want to understand now if you are looking expecting similar momentum to continue, when we need to see linear equation between headcount and revenue?
That is what I try to understand. And second question is about J and A. If I look at investment intensity, what I'm doing is your revenue minus profit, which to give absolute cost, what is the investment in J and A unit. This quarter, it seems to be taper on both. So whether we are optimizing or how to understand because typically that investment intensity should be higher, absolute term, it is showing some declines. If you can provide some sense.
Sense, think the last one, the investment intensity is high. That's why I I highlighted. Even though you we are at breakeven, you know, if you look at the opportunity cost, it's about $3.03 and a half crores. But
No. But if if I look at absolute number, so let's say from 14 or 14 and a half odd crore last quarter, which was the expense in that unit, now that expense has declined to 13.3 crore. So there is a decline.
Yep. That that's because of you're you're asking about the people. You you know, there are two parts to the generative AI business services. One is it direct people, and second is also the people from AI analytics, data science, and data engineering who get pulled into the business unit as and when required. So that's why you will see a little bit of, you know, that variability in the people cost.
So we have a dedicated team of 120 people, plus we are training the entire workforce on AI tools, and then the business unit pulls people from the other unit. So so simply put, the bench cost of those people do not come into the AI unit. I hope you are following. Only the 120 people of dedicated That's why they will see that little bit of, you know, a bench cost differential between quarter on quarter.
Understood. If you can also Just
Just add to that, Dipesh. You know, the way to look at investments is two. You know, one is some of the numbers that Venkat explained. But as we speak, there are two there are two clear areas in which we are investing from a general angle. The first is we've we're getting all of our people trained.
We've done 90% coverage on one zero one courses. We have two zero one courses that we're rolling out to to a larger set of the people. What percentage we'll cover is still to kind of figure that out. That's one investment. Second is, there's a lot of there's a lot of solutions and replicable solutions that are being developed, you know, that we that we expect will will contribute to both, I would say, slightly nonlinear growth because these are solutions that we're 50%, 60% completed that we can take across to multiple customers and also replicable sales so that the ease of selling and we reduce the effort involved and get more output.
And the third is there are there's a whole, you know, list of use cases that you've come up with, and we're trying to build POCs and demos that will enable us to get more revenue. So I I would look at our investment from those angles, and as long as we are doing, you know, all of these things, it will lead to higher growth. When I get back to Venkat for the other question.
Yeah. No.
He his question is more from a segmental result. He's asking, have your investment intensity into generative AI business services? My simple thesis is that there is there is a cost which is lying in IMSs within the vertical, which is all not getting pulled and shown as part of generative AI, which is what you are also mentioning, Joseph. For example, Ananda is adding salespeople within the vertical. Those vertical guys are today selling the the generative AI solutions that we have.
But is that cost being shown as part of generative AI? May not be to that extent because we have not gone to that level of, you know, accounting is what where I'm coming from. So if you if you really do that split and push all of that cost into generative AI, maybe, yes, you will see the investment intensity to be higher or the same same ratio as last quarter or the previous quarters.
Understand. If you can ask answer the first part of the question, employee headcount addition and the likely revenue implied growth.
Okay. Okay. Okay. So yep. See, we got a gross addition of 150 people.
That's what I said. You saw the net in headcount production of 109, improvement in utilization, but that doesn't tell you the full story unless you see the headcount addition of 150. So what what happened is you are actually getting people I don't want to use the word bench, but who are not fully deployed onto projects, getting replaced by people who are completely billable ready, AI ready, or automation ready, or who are who are ready to get built from the word go. So that's that's where I'm coming. Yes.
The the just in time hiring hiring, also repurposing of the people that we today have from project a to project b will be how we'll be getting to the higher billing of or keep to the same growth of 2.3% or 3%, whatever that we do from here quarter on quarter. But given the same even given that I've said that that we'll add people, there is little bit of, you know, divergence between linearity and, you know, revenue growth. People people addition and revenue growth from what we have seen past seen in the past years in the IT industry, and that's got to do with, you know, Understand.
And last question, attrition, I think, in job, and I think over last few quarter on the higher side, are we comfortable or this is one of the things where we have to work more?
So like, in time to present. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry, Joseph. Yeah. Go ahead. Ahead.
I would say it's a little bit on the higher side, but there are reasons for that as well. The patient, I'll tell you what they're doing as, you know, as well. One is, you know, for the digital and AI field that we have, there is a huge demand in the market.
That's the reality. And our percentage of revenue from these areas is is relatively much higher. Right? And therefore, that does put us under the scanner. The other thing that's been happening is, you know, the the as you would see that utilization has improved a fair bit over the last few quarters.
And we've done this through a very active program where we are looking at each of our individuals in the pool, happiest minds in the pool, looking at the skill set, what skill what what additional training they need. And in some cases, people are not able to, you know, get up to the level that they are that they need to be, and that's being reflected. But what we are also doing is we have initiated multiple people engagement program, training and, know, and learning and development, all of which increase funding and motivate people to continue. So I think we should have this number under control.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take this as the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management from HappiestMinds for closing comments.
Thank you for joining us today. We thank ICICI Securities for hosting this call on our behalf.
We look forward to interacting with you. You can reach out to us on r@theratehappiestminds.com. Thank you again. Have a good day.
Thank you.
On behalf of ICICI Securities Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.